Applied Cognitive Psychology Research Articles

Reviewers for Applied Cognitive Psychology 2014

Applied Cognitive PsychologyVolume 29, Issue 2 p. 320-321 List of Reviewers Reviewers for Applied Cognitive Psychology 2014 Graham Davies, Corresponding Author Graham DaviesSearch for more papers by this author Graham Davies, Corresponding Author Graham DaviesSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 March 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3113Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume29, Issue2March/April 2015Pages 320-321 RelatedInformation

Belief in Conspiracy Theories and Susceptibility to the Conjunction Fallacy

SummaryPeople who believe in the paranormal have been found to be particularly susceptible to the conjunction fallacy. The present research examines whether the same is true of people who endorse conspiracy theories. Two studies examined the association between conspiracist ideation and the number of conjunction violations made in a variety of contexts (neutral, paranormal and conspiracy). Study 1 found that participants who endorsed a range of popular conspiracy theories more strongly also made more conjunction errors than participants with weaker conspiracism, regardless of the contextual framing of the conjunction. Study 2, using an independent sample and a generic measure of conspiracist ideation, replicated the finding that conspiracy belief is associated with domain‐general susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy. The findings are discussed in relation to the association between conspiracism and other anomalous beliefs, the representativeness heuristic and the tendency to infer underlying causal relationships connecting ostensibly unrelated events. © 2014 The Authors. Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Detecting lies about consumer attitudes using the timed antagonistic response alethiometer

The Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer (TARA) is a true-false statement classification task that diagnoses lying on the basis of slower average response speeds. Previous research (Gregg in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 621-647, 2007) showed that a computer-based TARA was about 80 % accurate when its statements conveyed demographic facts or religious views. Here, we tested the TARA's diagnostic potential when its statements conveyed attitudes-here, toward both branded and generic consumer products-across different versions of the TARA (Exps. 1a, 1b, and 1c), as well as across consecutive administrations (Exp. 2). The results generalized well across versions, and maximal accuracy rates exceeding 80 % were obtained, although accuracy declined somewhat upon readministration. Overall, the TARA shows promise as a comparatively cheap, convenient, and diagnostic index of lying about attitudes.

Revisiting absolute and relative judgments in the WITNESS model

The WITNESS model (Clark in Applied Cognitive Psychology 17:629-654, 2003) provides a theoretical framework with which to investigate the factors that contribute to eyewitness identification decisions. One key factor involves the contributions of absolute versus relative judgments. An absolute contribution is determined by the degree of match between an individual lineup member and memory for the perpetrator; a relative contribution involves the degree to which the best-matching lineup member is a better match to memory than the remaining lineup members. In WITNESS, the proportional contributions of relative versus absolute judgments are governed by the values of the decision weight parameters. We conducted an exploration of the WITNESS model's parameter space to determine the identifiability of these relative/absolute decision weight parameters, and compared the results to a restricted version of the model that does not vary the decision weight parameters. This exploration revealed that the decision weights in WITNESS are difficult to identify: Data often can be fit equally well by setting the decision weights to nearly any value and compensating with a criterion adjustment. Clark, Erickson, and Breneman (Law and Human Behavior 35:364-380, 2011) claimed to demonstrate a theoretical basis for the superiority of lineup decisions that are based on absolute contributions, but the relationship between the decision weights and the criterion weakens this claim. These findings necessitate reconsidering the role of the relative/absolute judgment distinction in eyewitness decision making.

Memory for child sexual abuse information: Simulated memory error and individual differences

Building on the simulated-amnesia work of Christianson and Bylin (Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 495-511, 1999), the present research introduces a new paradigm for the scientific study of memory of childhood sexual abuse information. In Session 1, participants mentally took the part of an abuse victim as they read an account of the sexual assault of a 7-year-old. After reading the narrative, participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: They (1) rehearsed the story truthfully (truth group), (2) left out the abuse details of the story (omission group), (3) lied about the abuse details to indicate that no abuse had occurred (commission group), or (4) did not recall the story during Session 1 (no-rehearsal group). One week later, participants returned for Session 2 and were asked to truthfully recall the narrative. The results indicated that, relative to truthful recall, untruthful recall or no rehearsal at Session 1 adversely affected memory performance at Session 2. However, untruthful recall resulted in better memory than did no rehearsal. Moreover, gender, PTSD symptoms, depression, adult attachment, and sexual abuse history significantly predicted memory for the childhood sexual abuse scenario. Implications for theory and application are discussed.

Why interleaving enhances inductive learning: The roles of discrimination and retrieval

Kornell and Bjork (Psychological science 19:585-592, 2008) found that interleaving exemplars of different categories enhanced inductive learning of the concepts based on those exemplars. They hypothesized that the benefit of mixing exemplars from different categories is that doing so highlights differences between the categories. Kang and Pashler (Applied cognitive psychology 26:97-103, 2012) obtained results consistent with this discriminative-contrast hypothesis: Interleaving enhanced inductive learning, but temporal spacing, which does not highlight category differences, did not. We further tested the discriminative-contrast hypothesis by examining the effects of interleaving and spacing, as well as their combined effects. In three experiments, using photographs of butterflies and birds as the stimuli, temporal spacing was harmful when it interrupted the juxtaposition of interleaved categories, even when total spacing was held constant, supporting the discriminative-contrast hypothesis. Temporal spacing also had value, however, when it did not interrupt discrimination processing.

Timing and Frequency of Mental Effort Measurement: Evidence in Favour of Repeated Measures

SummarySubjective mental effort rating scales are widely used in research on learning, instruction and training. However, the timing and frequency of application of those rating scales differ between studies. Some apply a rating scale repeatedly after every task in a learning or test phase, whereas others do so only once at the end of a phase. Four experiments are presented that investigated how timing and frequency of mental effort measurements affect the results obtained. The findings from Experiment 1 (between‐subjects) and 2 (within‐subjects), using different arrangements of simple and complex tasks, showed that a single rating after a series of tasks resulted in a higher mental effort score than the average of ratings provided immediately after every task. A similar result was obtained in Experiment 3 with series of complex tasks, but not with simple tasks. Experiment 4 showed that knowing beforehand that mental effort rating will be required after completing all tasks results in lower scores, but average retrospective ratings per task still differed from a single retrospective rating. Taken together, these experiments suggest that timing and frequency of effort ratings do affect the results obtained and that repeatedly measuring mental effort after each task in the series seems to be preferable. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Applied Cognitive Psychology of Attention: A Step Closer to Understanding Magic Tricks

SummaryDrawing on psychological science, magic provides a unique perspective on applied cognition. Only sparse systematic research, however, documents the thought processes associated with viewing magic tricks. With responses from over 1000 participants, here, we show how individuals construe a classic magic routine wherein a performer appears to vanish a pen. Thirty‐four percent of participants correctly identified the key moment of the disappearance with only 11% thereof knowing what actions the magician actually performed to achieve the effect. Our collective findings support what magicians have known for a long time: knowing when a critical maneuver occurs hardly reveals the associated modus operandi. In line with a modern theory of attention, we discuss our results and highlight the interaction between the when and where attention modules as a necessary component of applied cognition in ecological settings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How I Got Started: From Applied Social Psychology to Applied Cognitive Psychology

The road to where I stand today started in 1984 in a hammock on a beach in the Thai island Koh Samui. I had taken a year out of my 3-year Masters programme in Social Psychology in Amsterdam, and Koh Samui was the last stage of my extensive travelling throughout Asia. One reason for taking this gap year was that I was lacking in motivation and wanted to contemplate what I could do instead. One fact did become crystal clear as I lay in my hammock: I realised I lacked the skills to do anything else! After returning to Amsterdam, I, therefore, walked into the office of the social psychology lecturer I liked the most: Frans Willem Winkel.

How I Got Started: Mixing Statistics and Applied Cognitive Psychology

How I Got Started: Mixing Statistics and Applied Cognitive Psychology

From the archive: ‘Testimony and evidence: A scientific case study of memory for child sexual abuse’ by S. Bidrose & G. S. Goodman (2000). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 197–213 with commentary

AbstractOver the past 25 years, Applied Cognitive Psychology had been an outlet for research that is both theoretically strong and has important applied implications. There are many articles during my tenure as Editor that reflect these qualities. However, one of the papers that I continue to be impressed with is this paper. In this study ‐ much like Neisser's (1981) case study of John Dean ‐ the authors compared the testimony of four girls regarding their alleged sexual abuse, with actual documentary evidence recorded by the leader of a ‘sex ring’. Approximately 80% of the girls' allegations were confirmed. This study is noteworthy because it provides real‐world data that addresses compelling questions regarding the reliability of children's abuse memories.

Probative value of absolute and relative judgments in eyewitness identification.

It is well-accepted that eyewitness identification decisions based on relative judgments are less accurate than identification decisions based on absolute judgments. However, the theoretical foundation for this view has not been established. In this study relative and absolute judgments were compared through simulations of the WITNESS model (Clark, Appl Cogn Psychol 17:629-654, 2003) to address the question: Do suspect identifications based on absolute judgments have higher probative value than suspect identifications based on relative judgments? Simulations of the WITNESS model showed a consistent advantage for absolute judgments over relative judgments for suspect-matched lineups. However, simulations of same-foils lineups showed a complex interaction based on the accuracy of memory and the similarity relationships among lineup members.

From the archive: ‘A memory and decision model for eyewitness identification’ by S. E. Clark (2003). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 629–654 with commentary

AbstractI chose this paper because it demonstrates an insightful application of theory to the complex problem of witness decision making. It provides an explicit mathematical model of how people make identifications, and applies it to existing published data sets with apparently discrepant findings. The outcomes challenge how we think about the identifi cation process, how we should interpret variations between studies, and what our applied recommendations about line‐ups should be.

From the archive: ‘Memory conformity: Can eyewitnesses influence each other's memories for an event?’ by F. Gabbert, A. Memon, & K. Allan (2003). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 533–543 with commentary

AbstractThis paper established a new direction for researchers interested in the malleability of memory in a forensic context or eyewitness paradigm. The paper was the first to extend ‘misinformation’ effects established in controlled laboratory settings to witness reports following discussions with fellow witnesses. This was achieved within a relatively naturalistic situation and it persuasively demonstrated what had long been observed in the social psychological literature: that the opinions of others affect our behaviour but can also quite dramatically alter our reports as well as our beliefs and memories. When eyewitnesses comply with the reports of others in a social interaction, the longterm consequences for their recollections are clearly substantial. This paper has stimulated much research which has reinforced and extended the basic findings.

From the archive: ‘Autobiographical memory: The next phase’ by J. A. Robinson & K. L. Swanson (1990). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 321–335 with commentary

AbstractRobinson and Swanson's article provides an excellent metric for judging how far we have come in the field of autobiographical memory and yet how far we still have to go in understanding this fascinating, uniquely‐human capability. Published in 1990, the article lays out the ‘next phase’ for research. We followed many of the suggestions put forth there and in doing so have indeed greatly enriched the field. Today in 2010, however, we can still read this article for the valuable insights and new directions it provides for future research.

From the archive: ‘Individual differences in children's suggestibility: A review and synthesis’ by M. Bruck & L. Melnyk (2004). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 947–996 with commentary

AbstractThis paper reviewed research on the association of children's suggestibility with cognitive, psycho‐social and demographic variables. It is impressive, both in scope and depth of analysis. The results of more than 500 measures derived from 69 published and unpublished studies were synthesized with several levels of analysis. Discussion focused on potential mechanisms that underlie suggestibility effects, the interactions between variables and how findings differ depending upon the component of suggestibility examined. Bruck and Melnyk concluded that apart from intellectual status, a strong case could not be made for any other variable being critical. Methodological and conceptual limitations were discussed in an effort to establish how these might have contributed to non‐significant results and could be addressed in future research.

From the archive: ‘Time went by so slowly: Overestimation of event duration by males and females’ by E. F. Loftus, J. W. Schooler, S. M. Boone, & D. Kline (1987). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 1, 3–13 with commentary

AbstractThis paper appeared in the very first volume of the very first issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology and exemplifies the place of this journal in the field. The authors present an elegant theoretical framework about the study of time from philosophical and psychological traditions, and discuss how time and memory are interwoven. In a series of experiments, Loftus et al. examined participants' perception of time as a function of arousal level, and showed that arousal increases time estimations, especially for females. Throughout the manuscript, the authors knit together theoretical ideas with forensic implications, reinforcing the mission of Applied Cognitive Psychology to present the best science that also has profound implications for real world issues and applications.

From the archive: ‘Involuntary autobiographical memories’ by D. Berntsen (1996). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 435–454 with commentary

AbstractThe paper introduced to cognitive psychology the phenomenon that autobiographical memories have a habit of springing effortlessly to mind. In a diary study, it was way ahead of its time. In addition to being part of the trend to bring aspects of everyday mental life into cognitive psychology, such involuntary memories have been explored by the author and others to strengthen the links between cognitive and clinical psychology, in this case PTSD.

From the archive: ‘Durable and generalized effects of spatial experience on mental rotation: Gender differences in growth patterns’ by M. S. Terlecki, N. S. Newcombe, & M. Little (2008). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 996–1013 with commentary

AbstractAmong the many excellent papers that I accepted for publication, Terlecki, et al. was one of the best. In exploring gender differences in spatial cognition, Terlecki et al. presented a methodologically and analytically rigorous study that provides both theoretical and applied insights. Findings suggest that even if the often observed gender differences in spatial ability—in which men outperform women—are biologically based, experience with spatial tasks leads to notable improvements among both men and women. The results have practical importance: women who report the most impoverished history of spatial experience are those for whom exposure to spatial tasks has the least impact initially, but additional exposure eventually produces the most rapidly improving results. Hence, one should not give up on training too easily; early discouraging performance is not predictive of eventual outcome, as long as the training persists. These results suggest viewing any genetic contributions to differences as calling for enriching, and not depressing, the environments of those who are most affected.

From the archive: ‘Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony?’ by K. A. Wade, S. L. Green, & R. A. Nash (2010). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 899–908 with commentary

AbstractApplied Cognitive Psychology has been at the forefront in publishing papers on the range of questioning and interrogation techniques that can induce either relatively accurate recall or lead to false memories. Wade et al's latest study illustrates the compelling effects of viewing false visual information on witness memory and beliefs. Participants gambled with a confederate who was later alleged to have cheated. Some saw a digitally manipulated record showing the accomplice cheating, while others were merely told the recording existed. Subsequently, they were informed that the authorities wished to take action and were asked whether they would sign an affidavit that they themselves had actually witnessed the accomplice cheating. Those who had seen the recording were three times more likely to sign the statement than those who had merely been told of its existence. It seems that in the age of Photoshop and Facebook, the compelling impact of images on our cognitions is only just beginning to be understood.